


Ellie

by melian225



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Beauxbatons, Community: HPFT, F/M, Hogwarts, Romance, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 14:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10878543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melian225/pseuds/melian225
Summary: Stuck in France for his seventh year, Justin Finch Fletchley grasps out for reminders of home.





	1. December 1997

**Author's Note:**

> For Kaitlin

He could remember the last time he’d seen her. It was in the summer – they’d been in Diagon Alley doing some shopping for the new school year. Scrimgeour was still Minister of Magic and Snape was not yet Headmaster of Hogwarts. But Dumbledore was dead, and that in itself had given the expedition a strange feeling, like something wasn’t quite right.

They hadn’t even planned to meet up that day. His family disliked receiving non-essential owls (“they leave feathers and droppings in the dining room, Justin!”) and she had not yet figured out the Muggle post system. But still they met. Serendipitous, he had called it. Fortuitous. Even more so, had he realised it would be the last time.

_Ellie …_

He could picture her – long blonde hair flowing behind her, freckles on her nose and sparkle in her eye. Beckoning him to their spot behind Greenhouse Three, in that alcove no one would ever notice if they weren’t looking for it. The hours they had passed there, unbeknownst to their classmates, their teachers … anyone at all.

Now everything had changed. Because he’d been at the school he was registered as a Muggle-born so had to either sit trial for owning a wand or go on the run. He spoke French fluently so his parents had sent him to Beauxbatons rather than Hogwarts for his final year; the palace was grand, glitzy, sparkling like her eyes had been. It reminded him a little of Eton, where he had originally been enrolled, with its turrets in perfect condition and the ivy growing only where it was allowed.

He hated it.

Hogwarts had been home for six years, and it had changed his life irrevocably. Beauxbatons was beautiful, yes, but it had no character. No history. And certainly no Ellie.

Her letters were less frequent now, sporadic, shorter. She didn’t say much about what was happening at the school, only that she had been found by someone she called a Snatcher and sent back there, having attempted initially to sit the year out at home. After all, she had her OWLs. It wouldn’t normally have been compulsory for her to return. He’d heard the rumours, though. Of students being forced to torture other students as punishment, of known Death Eaters openly on the staff. And once or twice he’d been sure he’d seen a smear of what could only have been blood on her normally spotless pages.

Ellie was suffering. And there was nothing he could do.

Sure, he could return to England, face the music. But all that would mean was either a life on the run, or submitting to the Ministry and surrendering his wand because, as he now knew, Muggle-borns couldn’t possibly be magic. At least, that was the line they were taking. And without a wand he could do nothing, could help no one. Least of all her.

He fingered a letter in his pocket. The most recent one he’d received, he could still smell her perfume on it. He wanted to write back, to tell her he would be with her soon, but she’d told him letters from Beauxbatons rarely got through these days. He felt so helpless, wanting to do something. Anything.

He walked up the stairs to his dormitory, scowling at everyone he met, particularly those who might want to speak to him. The last thing he wanted was to actually talk to anyone just now. He glowered at everything, the perfect stone walls and musical fountains at the castle irritating him. There was such a thing as too much perfection; things needed a flaw to feel real. _Ellie had a flaw_ , he reflected, thinking of her eyes, one slightly darker than the other, and her slightly asymmetrical nose. She hated it, but he found it endearing. It was part of what made her her, made her his Ellie.

_I miss you_ , he wanted to write to her. _I worry about you. I’ll be home for Christmas_. But he wasn’t even sure he would be. The Ministry would be watching all international travel, keeping an eye out for any miscreants they hadn’t yet bent to the administration’s will. No, he would have to  stay in France over the holiday period, relying on those letters she had already been able to smuggle out to him. It wasn’t much, but it was what he had. It would have to suffice.


	2. March 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News filters across the Channel

It was March when the rumours started flying in, some via owl, others printed in _Le Chouette Messenger_ , the local newspaper. They had of course long been used to ignoring many of the stories coming across the Channel, being clearly Voldemort-inspired propaganda, but this was different. There were tales of Harry Potter, of all people, not captured and languishing in Azkaban, but escaping capture at Malfoy Manor, somehow Disapparating in a place held by an Anti-Disapparition Jinx.

A few weeks later it started up again, this time with tales of Potter riding a dragon out of Gringott’s, of appearing at Hogwarts ready to fight. This wasn’t what the British Ministry wanted people to believe, so Justin was inclined to suspect it was accurate.

But … a fight at Hogwarts? That was where Ellie was, where so many young and innocent children were. They hadn’t asked for this. Would they be involved no matter what? He frowned, concerned about the fate of so many kids he’d never met. But then, he’d always been like that. It was one of the things Ellie had liked about him.

Like everyone else, he followed as best he could, reading each missive with bated breath. Several came over the next few hours, as those students with family in the UK were kept up to date with the latest rumours. Some appeared to be true; others were so wildly fanciful it didn’t take much to disregard them. But it did seem that Harry Potter had again reappeared, out of hiding, and was at Hogwarts. And that Voldemort was either on campus, or on his way.

“Harry Potter!” Justin found he was once again a subject of intrigue, as student after student came to him, asking for tales of Potter. Justin couldn’t tell them much, but their minor skirmish in second year seemed to have  a lot of people fascinated. “Is he a dark wizard, then, that he is a Parselmouth?” he was asked again and again. And, of course, he didn’t really know. Justin didn’t _think_ Potter was on the Death Eaters’ side, but then again he couldn’t be certain, could he? After all, there had to be a reason he’d evaded capture by the Ministry for so long.

When the newspaper reports came in after the fight, it was more a flood than the trickle they had become accustomed to. Voldemort had fallen, somehow, to Potter, in a stand-off witnessed by hundreds of people. But not before a massacre, one in which students, some under-age who had snuck back into the castle somehow to fight, and some kind of anti-Ministry force fought together on the lawns and in the castle proper. The list of dead – and _Le Chouette Messenger_ had named each and every one of them – was mind-blowing.

He scanned the list hurriedly, seeking out names he recognised. Fred Weasley – that was one. He didn’t know him but remembered, as they all did, the day Fred and his twin (what was his name again?) had got one over that awful woman Umbridge and flown out of the school forever. Remus Lupin was another – Justin was sure that was his old Defence teacher. Wasn’t he a werewolf or something? He smiled ruefully. Again, he thought, looking at the crystal sculptures lining the dining hall, only at Hogwarts. They would never take such a risk here.

Nymphadora Tonks Lupin, he read. A woman’s name. Was Professor Lupin married, then? He’d never realised that. He wondered – perhaps for the first time – how married professors fared when separated from their spouses for so long. Funny how he’d never really thought of them as people before.

He started at the name Severus Snape, especially when the newspaper described him as a resistance fighter. That was news to him, and probably to everyone else in the world. Who on earth would have thought that? Aside from Dumbledore, of course.

He then saw Mandy Brocklehurst’s name, and started paying more attention. He’d known Mandy, had been reasonably fond of her. She was in their year, and it was the first name he’d seen of a current student. Frantic, he kept reading. Lavender Brown. Vincent Crabbe. Colin Creevey. It seemed to be in alphabetical order, so he skipped to the Ms, hoping against hope she had made it through.

His hopes, though, were to be dashed. There it was, in black and white. Eloise Midgen.

He pushed the paper away and sank down onto his seat, not seeing or hearing anything around him. Ellie. She couldn’t be gone, could she? No, it had to be a mistake. She had to still be alive. He’d write to her, get an answer, have it confirmed once and for all that the newspaper had made a mistake.

The letters stood out on the page, black, taunting him.

Eloise Midgen.

No. It couldn’t be her. It had to be someone else.

As the days went by, though, and there was no response to his letter, his hopes began to fade. Every report he could get his hands on listed her among the casualties of the war. His friends in France began saying things like, “she died making the world a better place”. They sounded almost as hollow as he felt. They didn’t really understand, he knew. They couldn’t. They had never known Ellie, could never appreciate the depth of his loss.

He stopped eating, didn’t bother with schoolwork. With exams so near he knew he would have to re-sit them at a later date to have any hope of passing, but he felt like that didn’t matter. Nothing did. Ellie had gone.

“I know. It sucks,” Etienne, his dorm-mate, said one night as he sat wordlessly by the window. “At least, when you go back, you will be able to put flowers on her grave.”

Justin brightened, if only a little. Flowers on her grave. It wasn’t much, but he could do that.


	3. June 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justin's attention is caught by a name on a form at work.

Justin got to work just after eight and smiled at the jacket still hanging off the back of his chair. He must have left it there the previous night; heck, it was still so warm even at seven o’clock that he hadn’t realised he didn’t have it.

He didn’t normally leave work so late, but he’d had a lot to do. For some reason all the new Floo connection applications seemed to arrive in early summer, and he didn’t want to come to the office in the morning to find twenty files still on his desk. It wasn’ t a hard job, working in the Floo Regulation Office, but it was an essential one if people were to be able to keep in touch, and to get places. It was a job that helped people, albeit in an indirect way, and Justin liked helping people.

By the time he got back to his desk after making his first cup of tea for the day, someone – probably Marietta – had put a new stack of files on his desk. Another set of applications, he thought, pleased he’d had his morning caffeine before seeing it. There was maybe half an hour’s work for each one, so he was set for at least the rest of the day. With the ten he had left over from the previous night, probably well into tomorrow too. Just as well he didn’t have any plans for lunch.

As he always did, he flicked through the files, checking dates and locations, doing an informal triage to determine what to work on next. He was about a third of the way through when the applicant’s name caught his eye.

Eloise Midgen.

His heart stopped and he dropped the rest of the files, the resultant crash reverberating around the office. Thank goodness no one else was in yet, aside from Marietta, and she’d never bother to check what had made the noise. She always had her nose in a book and barely paid attention to anyone else … if her mother wasn’t head of Department, he mused, there was no way they would put up with it.

He put the files into a makeshift stack and looked again at the application. Yes, it definitely said Eloise Midgen. Barely even breathing in his anxiety, he flipped through to find her details – address and date of birth.

The address didn’t ring a bell, but then again she was twenty-four now, like him. Neither of them would be at their parents’ addresses. Shaking, he looked for the date of birth.

January twenty-sixth, 1980.

It was her. Holy banshees, it was her. It had to be. No one else in wizarding Britain had the same name and birthdate, did they?

Unless … He frowned. Maybe someone else was using her name, her details. He’d heard his Muggle lawyer father talk about it. Identity theft, he had called it. Taking the information belonging to a dead person and using it for their own benefit.

That had to be it. Ellie was dead. Only last month, on the anniversary, he’d put more roses by her grave, as he’d done every May since it happened. And every January, on her birthday. No, he never forgot the roses.

He decided to write to the applicant, feigning some kind of problem with their application. Get them to come in for a meeting. He’d see they weren’t Ellie, and confront them about stealing her identity. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. How dare they! Who did they think they were? This was monstrous disrespect for someone who was widely regarded as a war hero.

 

> _Dear Ms Midgen_
> 
> _There have been some minor issues with your recent Floo registration. Please come by the office at your earliest convenience to discuss._
> 
> _Regards_
> 
> _Justin Finch-Fletchley  
> _ _Floo Regulation Office_

It was three days before she came in. Marietta showed her into his office, apparently having put her book down for long enough to actually do her job. She peered around the door jamb timidly, not moving until he raised his head to indicate she could enter.

“Justin?” she asked tentatively. “Is it really you?”

He stood up, amazed, not believing the apparition in front of him. For someone impersonating Ellie, she was doing an incredible job. She looked exactly like her.

“Ms Midgen?”

She stood in the doorway, her whole figure sagging. “Justin? Don’t you remember me?”

He rubbed his eye. It couldn’t be her. Could it?

“Ellie??”

She came in and stood before his desk. “I got the letter and it had your name on it, but …”

“But what??”

“I thought … I thought you were still in France,” she said after a brief hesitation.

He stared at her. “I came back after the war, of course,” he said. “But you … they said you were dead!”))

She stared at him in confusion. “You thought I was dead?”

“There was a funeral, and a grave, and everything. I put flowers on it. I put flowers on it _last month_ , Ellie!” He had come around the front of his desk by now and was facing her, just inches away. He wondered if he could pull her towards him, if she would allow him, but too much had to be cleared up first. “I mourned you,” he said after a moment, taking in the stunned look on her face. “I’ve been mourning you ever since the Battle.”

Suddenly, comprehension flicked across her face. “They got me confused with Lisa Turpin,” she said quietly. “Same hair colour, same build. She was so messed up they couldn’t see who she was from her face.” Silent tears began streaming down her cheeks. “I was in St Mungo’s under Lisa’s name, so she must have been …”

She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.

“I can’t believe it,” Justin said. “All this time I’ve been mourning you …”

She looked up at him. “Not now, though?”

“What do you mean? Of course now. How could I forget you, Ellie? How could I forget _us_?”

She wiped a tear from her eye. “I thought you were in France,” she whispered. “I thought you’d chosen not to come back. If I’d known you were in England …”

He took that as permission, as an invitation, and closed the distance between them. One hand went to her cheek, the other to the small of her back. When she didn’t pull away, he leaned down and kissed her.

It was beautiful, it was wonderful, it was the sweetest, most tender, most loving kiss he could remember being part of. It was a kiss seven years in the making, one that would move mountains if it needed to. One that had moved mountains.

When they eventually broke apart he gazed down at her and smiled. “I can’t believe you’re back,” he said softly.

She grinned at him. “That was far too long coming,” she said. “But anyway, Justin, seeing you is only part of why I’m here.”

He just looked at her. What else was there, other than the two of them.

She kept smiling. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to see me about, for this Floo registration?”


End file.
